femslash ficlets

Title: Choice and Treason
Fandom: Final Fantasy VI
Pairing: Celes/Terra
Rating: G
Prompt: #018 - Cut (#060 - remainder)
Word Count: 300

Celes had an elaborate sword-maintenance ritual. Since she used her blades to catch magic, it was even more involved than Cyan's. She could spend two hours sharpening and oiling her blades easily.

Terra usually matched her work for about fifteen minutes, and then draped herself across Celes' shoulders, meditating. But when Locke approached, she instinctively led him away. Celes had been brittle, since the reunion.

Terra could guess why, and a lot of it had to do with Locke. Who looked, if anything, like he was trying to explain a bad quiz score to his parents. "Um. I just wanted to -"

"Say you're sorry you accused Celes of treason in front of everyone, when she hadn't done anything to deserve it?" Terra finished.

Locke flinched, frowned. "I didn't. And she had. She did betray the Empire."

"I think you forget that I did, too," said Terra.

"But that was different!" said Locke. "They were using you. Controlling you."

Terra just tilted her head. Watched him. Waited.

"It's not the same," Locke insisted. "She could choose."

"She says that too," said Terra. "But I'm not as sure. If your choice is 'do the thing' or 'die', and you've been taught all your life that your whole duty is to obey..."

"She still had a choice," Locke insisted. "It wasn't out of line for me to believe Kefka." And he stopped right there because really, no one in hearing would cut a guy a break for believing anything Kefka said.

"Yes," said Terra. "But she chose to be executed for disobeying. She couldn't pick the locks. She wouldn't have escaped at all if you hadn't turned up. You can be a Returner and it's just risk, it's not fixed. She chose to die rather than obey and you're questioning her loyalty."

Title: The Inner Face
Fandom: Final Fantasy VI
Pairing: Celes/Terra
Rating: G
Prompt: #015 - Mask
Word Count: 100

"I wouldn't," Terra warned.

Celes picked up the mask anyway. Shadow had several, she knew. Cloth could absorb only so much blood, sweat and spit before even the hardiest soul was driven to wash it. This one was practically rigid with it.

"I could set it on fire?" Terra offered hopefully, wrinkling her nose.

"No," sighed Celes, and tossed it toward the shore of the lake, where it had been before the wind caught it. "Let him wash it. I think it does not hide as much as he hopes it does."

"Masks rarely do," Terra agreed. "But still. Ew."

Title: On Hope
Fandom: Final Fantasy VI
Pairing: Celes/Terra
Rating: G
Prompt: #011 - Faith
Word Count: 200
Summary: Faith is what you need to survive the end of the world.
( Read more... )

Title: Only You Can Prevent Burned Houses
Fandom: Final Fantasy VI
Pairing: Celes/Terra
Rating: G
Prompt: #008 - History
Word Count: 100
Summary: After a Thamasan house burns down, a snippet about power and its use.
( Read more... )

Fandom: Final Fantasy VI
Pairing: Celes/Terra
Rating: G
Prompt: #039 - question
Word Count: 200

Terra found Celes in the dark before dawn, watching the stars slowly fading in the east.

"Locke's being...strange, in the inn?" Terra opened with, carefully. She wasn't sure what the right word for alternately brooding and stomping was.

"He's aware that he was wrong and that being wrong has consequences," said Celes distantly, without turning around.

"Thinking you would betray everyone because Kefka said you did," Terra nodded. She didn't need to comment on the stupidity of the mistake. Like Celes - and honestly, even moreso - she knew Kefka's ways.

Celes nodded, a quick curt gesture. "Only doubted me 'for a moment', he said. As if it were an inconsequential thing. As if it did not give Kefka the advantage at a crucial point. I betrayed the Empire. So of course it is possible I would also betray the Returners."

Terra shook her head. "No. It's not. When you make up your mind it stays made up." There was a hint in her voice both of sorrow and respect. Terra tended to doubt everything. They'd both been right, and wrong, at different times as a result.

Celes turned then, a hint of a relieved smile playing about her lips.

Fandom: Final Fantasy VI
Pairing: Celes/Terra
Rating: PG
Prompt: #028 - Mood
Word Count: 100

Terra sniffled quietly laying the flowers on Leo's grave. Celes set the general's sword in the earth, upright. Marker, memorial.

Unusually, even their companions were subdued. Leo had been an honorable man. Proof that the Empire they hated was only truly embodied in two of its leaders.

Celes was just glad they were quiet. Terra was crying, though she was trying to be quiet about it. Celes unhooked her white cloak, wrapped it carefully about Terra's soldiers.

"There's so much I wanted to know," murmured Terra.

Celes put a light arm around her shoulders. There was nothing else to say.

Title: Or Be Undone
Fandom: Final Fantasy VI
Pairing: Celes/Terra
Rating: G
Prompt: #021 - Late
Word Count: 200
Summary: When floating continents fall, it's time to run.

"But Shadow!" pleaded Terra, even as she fireballed a demented cross between a jester and a ninja that Kefka had probably only just invented. Running on her toes made for a graceful-looking leap over its charred corpse.

Everyone was running. And fighting. They had to get to the edge before the magic holding several hundred thousand tons of rock in the air gave out.

"We will have to hope he can make his own way," said Celes, as she used her shield to bash another jester-ninja in the face, her blade cleaving it in half before it could recover. "There's no time to go anywhere but the edge. We've got to get to the airship."

Her white cape streamed behind her as she ran, a beacon among the drab rocks. Not, however, quite as visible a beacon as Terra's frequent fireballs. There weren't many survivors that required attention from Celes' blades, or Cyan's.

"Do you think he's alive?" asked Terra, worried and not at all out of breath as she step-leaped over a rock.

"I believe that if anyone can survive ambushing Kefka, it is probably Shadow," said Celes tersely. It wasn't that she was ungrateful. There were simply priorities.

Title: Playing with Hair
Fandom: Final Fantasy VI
Pairing: Celes/Terra
Rating: PG
Prompt: Challenge #020 - remainder/#004 - Twist
Word Count: 100
Summary: Women with long hair need to be creative on long treks.

Terra enjoyed getting to brush Celes' hair in the evenings. While they listened to the others chatting - who killed what, how creatively, and what dinner had to offer were the standard topics - Terra would carefully comb out Celes' blond hair, twist it into ropes, and braid the ropes together for another day of adventuring.

Celes returned the favor in the mornings, twisting and braiding Terra's green locks into something that could survive another day of wilderness combat. But Terra enjoyed it; Celes saw it as practical necessity.

Nevertheless, Celes usually found a flower to twist into the braids.

Title: Therapeutic Destruction
Fandom: Final Fantasy VI
Pairing: Celes/Terra
Rating: PG
Prompt: #002 - Break (#020 Remainder)
Word Count: 300
Summary: The Returners came for the meeting. Terra came for the crown.

( Read more... )

Title: The Limits of Exploration
Fandom: Final Fantasy VI
Pairing: Celes/Terra
Rating: PG
Prompt: #012 - The Five Senses (during remainder week)
Word Count: 200
Summary: Limits in play


It was something of a peculiar blessing, Celes sometimes reflected, that their past time together in the Empire's service was the key to their current compatibility.

What minefields we would be to others, Celes thought.

Terra enjoyed sense play, for example. Delicate stems of melting ice traced gently across her limbs. Heated silks. Gently blown exhalations, the vibration of humming with lips against flesh.

But never, ever, to be bound or held down. Not in play, not in any other way. She wouldn't react well to so much as fingertips brushing her wrists. She would grip leather straps or a bedpost or whatever might help - like Celes, her innate powers made actual attempts to grip another person perilous - but never, ever, could she be restrained by another. Never gagged, either - never silenced.

And that was Kefka's legacy.

Celes could not submit. She had to be the actor, not the acted-upon. To bow, to retreat, to let another take charge, had become an abhorrent abdication of responsibility. There was no protection, no safety in following orders, no joy. To obey, to submit, was to allow another Maranda. Not even in the bedroom, now.

And that was Gestahl's legacy.